The street lights have come on, it’s time to go inside…Carrianne Leung on her sublime novel-in-short-stories, plus what happens behind closed doors, suicide, mental illness, more
By Leslie Lindsay Brilliant collection of intertwined/interconnected short stories about a suburban subdivision in the late 1970s/early 1980s. Winner of the Danuta Gleed Literary Award (Writers’ Union of Canada) An Amazon Best Book of the Month (Literature & Fiction) Such a striking and brilliant collection of short stories from Canadian author Carrianne Leung. I absolutely adored THAT TIME I LOVED YOU (Liveright Publishing, February 2019), and felt a bit melancholy when it was over; I wanted to stay with these characters longer. ~ DECEMBER SHORT STORIES SERIES ~ When I finished this collection, sat the book down, I said, “Five glorious stars,” and I don’t do that often. These stories are about children losing innocence, adults burying their pain. They start off with a ‘rash’ of parent suicides, one right after the other, in this new development, where everything appears ‘perfect.’ The characters are flawed but endearing. Leung’s prose is absolutely glimmering and lucid. I couldn’t get enough. THAT TIME I LOVED YOU is a harrowing and stunning portrait of suburbia in that tender period of adolescence and new promise (the neighborhood is …